Tales of the Valiant Game Master's Guide impressions

Distracted DM

Distracted DM
Supporter
I already shared this elsewhere, but Kobold Press' GMG table of contents actually got me a little excited- I'm overall positive on TotV, but I primarily use A5E. KP put a preview up on DTRPG, I'll share the preview ToC here since that's what initially got me interested in the book.
I think I'm mostly sharing my thoughts for those that might consider picking this up... I am biased though! I've been grouchy critical of a lot of the WotC design direction over the last several years and there's a lot of press about the soon to be released DMG; some parts I'm interested in seeing but I don't expect to be wowed overall.. this might color KP's GMG more positively since it's not WotC and has some contributors that I know I like.

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I picked up the PDF and am skimming it- here are some comments on sections that stand out to me as I skim:

How to GM
Pacing: So friggin' important, and I think that they give some good advice here. It's half a page.
Sometimes things fall apart: I think it's nice for GMs, old and new, to hear that sometimes no matter how hard you try games or groups fall through/fizzle out.

Adventures & Campaigns
Flavors of Fantasy: They cover different types of fantasy and provide examples of each, about a paragraph for each type. Dark Fantasy, High, Science Fantasy, Weird, etc. I guess that's helpful, to have defined names and descriptions. I'd say that it'd be nice if there were suggestions for running each of these styles- for example Sword and Sorcery has an entry, but running modern DnD with Sword and Sorcery is, IMO, tough to do without a lot of house rules... you're probably better off with a different game like DCC. Maybe they'll touch on how to run each better in the optional rules section, or elsewhere.

Tiers of Play: Standard 4 tiers and descriptions of them. I kind of wish they'd broken it up into 5 tiers, but this is all opinionated feedback :D

Gods and Religions: They cover a lot here, over ~5 pages. I'll need to read this whole section thoroughly, I think it has useful info.

Advanced Combat
OK here we go, I'm hoping for some good stuff here.

Theater of the Mind, adjudicating Areas of Effect: How many foes does a Fireball hit in Theater of the Mind combat? What about Wall of Fire? Well, they have suggested numbers here for each common AoE size! Nice.

Encounter Templates: A bunch of examples for types of fights- a boss with bodyguards, two/three bosses, a horde, rivals, wolfpack, all with several examples of different levels with named monsters. Cool. More importantly (to me) this section also has a couple Battlefield Zone examples, like "volcanic summit" including a lava lake with platforms, flat rock shelves, and a field of towering boulders. Honestly I'd love a bunch more of those examples! They spur my imagination.

Special Combat Scenarios: rules for Aerial Combat, large-scale combats, multi-phase combats, and more! Multi-phase combat advice sounds useful, especially since I'm going to be finishing up Red Hand of Doom soon. They give some examples of a single opponent transforming into different things as their HP is reduced to zero... we've seen this elsewhere, it's not new, but it's nice to see here and I think it'd tick my players off (in a good way). Underwater combat rules are actually a little harsher on the players, which I like! Creatures that're completely submerged have total cover from attacks outside the water... is that standard 5e? That seems like too much but I'm not sure...

Minions and Hordes: Minion rules look similar to MCDM's (and 13th Age's iirc, been a while).
Adjudicating Attacks and effects for hordes: As earlier, but with horde numbers.

Variant Rules: These include a number of special rules
Bloodied creatures. I think I like these rules, though I'm not sure if they're suggesting that they be used for PCs AND monsters, or just the latter.. I assume just monsters. I wonder if there was a section earlier on explaining to players that rules aren't universal between PCs and NPCs :'D . "What do you mean the Hag can go ethereal but it's not a spell so I can't counter it?! I can't do that!"
Called Shots: Always a contentious subject. "I want to go for the dragon's vital organs/weak spot so we can kill it quicker!" "Why can't I shoot the cyclops in the eye so it's blind?" To which I've given a couple answers over the years: "Well it's assumed that your characters are always trying to strike vital spots, HP is an abstract of that. Your final strike against the dragon IS in its weak spot!" "Are you OK with the monsters being able to blind your characters in the same fashion?" ANYWAY...
This rule says it's harder to hit a location, but you deal a bit more damage if you hit- if you crit, it does even more damage, and goes on to say that you can combine it with the optional Injuries rule (seen later). I think I like the idea? It seems to sort of step on the great weapon master/sharpshooter "penalty to hit in exchange for more damage" options which require a feat to get...

Expanded Doom: It says in the Monster Vault (maybe I should get that too) Doom is a GM resource that the GM gets to make encounters more ... doomful. This adds more ways to acquire and spend Doom. It reminds me of the FFG Star Wars ttrpg Force/Dark Side points mechanic... it seems like it'd be most valuable when you can visually show the players these "doom points" you've accrued to spend, at least I think that's the case because it's valuable in ramping up the tension. I guess it also justifies a bunch of these otherwise rules-breaking features (a creature can auto-save for instance, normally you'd only expect that of legendaries)... though not narratively. Narratively I guess it could be handwaved, since the mechanics of combat =/= literal narrative result.

To Be Continued
OK I wanted to push through to the end of the section, but there's a lot more to go and I need to prep for a game tonight! I'll continue this another time, please share your thoughts especially if you picked up your own copy or checked out the free preview on DTRPG.

Cont'd Advanced Combat
Cont'd Advanced Exploration & Social
Cont'd Adventuring Options
 
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Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero
I'd say that it'd be nice if there were suggestions for running each of these styles- for example Sword and Sorcery has an entry, but running modern DnD with Sword and Sorcery is, IMO, tough to do without a lot of house rules... you're probably better off with a different game like DCC.
One thing the 5E era of ENWorld has shown me is that there's a segment of the 5E player base who cannot be convinced that 5E is not the perfect game for every genre, and how dare you suggest otherwise?

Sword and sorcery? 5E, obviously.

Terrifying grimdark adventures? 5E, of course.

Superheroes in contemporary New York City? Duh, 5E.

Mecha battling across the massive interior of a Dyson sphere? That screams 5E.

Chess? 5E! Clearly!
 
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Distracted DM

Distracted DM
Supporter
Continuing a bit more tonight, let's see...

Expanded Special Melee Attacks: Grappling and shoving are common, these are MORE. Before I actually read further, I'll say that I'd be concerned with inundating players with action options. I've been running A5E for 1-2yrs now and it's too much more some players- there are SO MANY features! Adding MORE attack options... well for vanilla DnD/ToV maybe it's great? I like the concept.

Dirty tricks, overrunning foes, stealing, moving enemies, heavier shoves and tumbling. Each of these has "if you won by 5 or more" or "if you fail by more than 5" that makes it seem pretty cool... probably a GREAT addition to 5e/TotV. Probably too much to add to A5E with its many martial maneuvers. I really like that if the target beats the PC's attempt by a lot they get to punish them for the attempt (ex: overrun, they can knock you prone).

Hitting Cover: tldr if you miss the target cuz of cover but would hit the cover-provider's AC, you hit the target. I've thought about this before but I've never been sure if it's worthwhile... has a fun piece of accompanying art :D

Injuries: gives reasons a creature might sustain an injury.
INJURY TABLE! Oh I could use this for my Dark Sun-inspired game. I've been using DCC tables but this is nice too, and it includes 5e mechanics. Ha, infection! Wow. Oh, it's removed with magical healing... a lot of these are. What group won't have access to a single instance of magical healing? Potions are magical healing, yeah? I guess it's a miracle, blah. Holy crud these include limb loss! Oh man, perfect.

Morale! Rules for morale, suggestions when creatures might run, and effects of a group and leader on morale, and how your creatures can rally after broken morale. Someone's been playing miniatures games :'D Fun stuff, I usually wing these rolls but the rules presented are pretty similar to "winging it" "rules;" I guess they're common sense.

Parry and Defensive Combat: Oh, interesting? I think a lot of this stuff is more useful for smaller numbers of elite creatures, say FOUL BLACKGUARDS, because managing these little choices of multiple creatures at once would be kind of a pain in the arse. I think the design mechanics are pretty sound, though.

Parting Shots: Creature retreating from combat taking parting shots- in real life it's probably effective, but in DnD if the party has forced the enemy into retreat ... a few parting shots won't deter them from running down the foe to prevent survivors from warning others :'D

That's the end of the Advanced Combat section, but fear not for there are MORE options and variant rules later on in the book!
Next section is Advanced Exploration, including Unusual Environments, PUZZLES, and Additional Rules.

Final thought on this section: I love how the book really seems to suggest (to my mind) that each table is going to be its own experience, it's YOUR game. Here are a load of optional rules, see what fits your group... because I really doubt you'll be using ALL of these :'D way too much. Some of these will jump out at some folks and not others... but they all seem pretty mechanically sound, ya know? Even the Called Shot one.
 
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Black Dougal

Footpad
Following along. Huge fan of Kobold Press, love the Game Masters Guide. Big fan of minions and hoards, encounter templates, bloodied, as well as doom...

I enjoy the Monster Vault, and as many know it's a pretty basic standard faire offering of monsters BUT you should probably get that as well to answer your rhetorical question ;)
 

Micah Sweet

Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
I already shared this elsewhere, but Kobold Press' GMG table of contents actually got me a little excited- I'm overall positive on TotV, but I primarily use A5E. KP put a preview up on DTRPG, I'll share the preview ToC here since that's what initially got me interested in the book.
I think I'm mostly sharing my thoughts for those that might consider picking this up... I am biased though! I've been grouchy critical of a lot of the WotC design direction over the last several years and there's a lot of press about the soon to be released DMG; some parts I'm interested in seeing but I don't expect to be wowed overall.. this might color KP's GMG more positively since it's not WotC and has some contributors that I know I like.

View attachment 381444View attachment 381445

I picked up the PDF and am skimming it- here are some comments on sections that stand out to me as I skim:

How to GM
Pacing: So friggin' important, and I think that they give some good advice here. It's half a page.
Sometimes things fall apart: I think it's nice for GMs, old and new, to hear that sometimes no matter how hard you try games or groups fall through/fizzle out.

Adventures & Campaigns
Flavors of Fantasy: They cover different types of fantasy and provide examples of each, about a paragraph for each type. Dark Fantasy, High, Science Fantasy, Weird, etc. I guess that's helpful, to have defined names and descriptions. I'd say that it'd be nice if there were suggestions for running each of these styles- for example Sword and Sorcery has an entry, but running modern DnD with Sword and Sorcery is, IMO, tough to do without a lot of house rules... you're probably better off with a different game like DCC. Maybe they'll touch on how to run each better in the optional rules section, or elsewhere.

Tiers of Play: Standard 4 tiers and descriptions of them. I kind of wish they'd broken it up into 5 tiers, but this is all opinionated feedback :D

Gods and Religions: They cover a lot here, over ~5 pages. I'll need to read this whole section thoroughly, I think it has useful info.

Advanced Combat
OK here we go, I'm hoping for some good stuff here.

Theater of the Mind, adjudicating Areas of Effect: How many foes does a Fireball hit in Theater of the Mind combat? What about Wall of Fire? Well, they have suggested numbers here for each common AoE size! Nice.

Encounter Templates: A bunch of examples for types of fights- a boss with bodyguards, two/three bosses, a horde, rivals, wolfpack, all with several examples of different levels with named monsters. Cool. More importantly (to me) this section also has a couple Battlefield Zone examples, like "volcanic summit" including a lava lake with platforms, flat rock shelves, and a field of towering boulders. Honestly I'd love a bunch more of those examples! They spur my imagination.

Special Combat Scenarios: rules for Aerial Combat, large-scale combats, multi-phase combats, and more! Multi-phase combat advice sounds useful, especially since I'm going to be finishing up Red Hand of Doom soon. They give some examples of a single opponent transforming into different things as their HP is reduced to zero... we've seen this elsewhere, it's not new, but it's nice to see here and I think it'd tick my players off (in a good way). Underwater combat rules are actually a little harsher on the players, which I like! Creatures that're completely submerged have total cover from attacks outside the water... is that standard 5e? That seems like too much but I'm not sure...

Minions and Hordes: Minion rules look similar to MCDM's (and 13th Age's iirc, been a while).
Adjudicating Attacks and effects for hordes: As earlier, but with horde numbers.

Variant Rules: These include a number of special rules
Bloodied creatures. I think I like these rules, though I'm not sure if they're suggesting that they be used for PCs AND monsters, or just the latter.. I assume just monsters. I wonder if there was a section earlier on explaining to players that rules aren't universal between PCs and NPCs :'D . "What do you mean the Hag can go ethereal but it's not a spell so I can't counter it?! I can't do that!"
Called Shots: Always a contentious subject. "I want to go for the dragon's vital organs/weak spot so we can kill it quicker!" "Why can't I shoot the cyclops in the eye so it's blind?" To which I've given a couple answers over the years: "Well it's assumed that your characters are always trying to strike vital spots, HP is an abstract of that. Your final strike against the dragon IS in its weak spot!" "Are you OK with the monsters being able to blind your characters in the same fashion?" ANYWAY...
This rule says it's harder to hit a location, but you deal a bit more damage if you hit- if you crit, it does even more damage, and goes on to say that you can combine it with the optional Injuries rule (seen later). I think I like the idea? It seems to sort of step on the great weapon master/sharpshooter "penalty to hit in exchange for more damage" options which require a feat to get...

Expanded Doom: It says in the Monster Vault (maybe I should get that too) Doom is a GM resource that the GM gets to make encounters more ... doomful. This adds more ways to acquire and spend Doom. It reminds me of the FFG Star Wars ttrpg Force/Dark Side points mechanic... it seems like it'd be most valuable when you can visually show the players these "doom points" you've accrued to spend, at least I think that's the case because it's valuable in ramping up the tension. I guess it also justifies a bunch of these otherwise rules-breaking features (a creature can auto-save for instance, normally you'd only expect that of legendaries)... though not narratively. Narratively I guess it could be handwaved, since the mechanics of combat =/= literal narrative result.

To Be Continued
OK I wanted to push through to the end of the section, but there's a lot more to go and I need to prep for a game tonight! I'll continue this another time, please share your thoughts especially if you picked up your own copy or checked out the free preview on DTRPG.

Cont'd Advanced Combat
Ok, you've convinced me. This one's going on the list.
 

zakael19

Adventurer
Picked this up last night after chatting with a KS backer I know about it a bit as well. Generally quite impressed, it's very 4e DMG-ish in all the best ways.

-Starts off with the role of the GM, but in a much better fashion then the 2014 DMG does. Provides a pretty solid analogue of "GM's Agenda" most quality games do these days under "Tenants of the GM."
-Goes right into How to be a GM, with a detailed walkthrough of player styles (again, very 4e DMG - but updated for how society & game culture has developed).
-Good set of questions for Session 0: both for characters to help develop them and anchor them (family, adventuring drives, etc); and for the players themselves.
-Some great ideas for pacing, putting forth a lot of the common things that can eat up time and giving various ideas on how to deal with them.

General it feels like KP has taken all the best ideas of the 3PP 5e world and tried to work them in. You've got MCDM/4e minion ideas with a bit of their own spin, solid encounter/creature building rules, colossal enemy pointers, a pretty decent bit on dungeon creation + classic mapping, and tables to do random generation, magic item crafting + monster part harvesting etc.

Lots of non-5e ideas too - factions with tiers (mapped to the 5e 4 tiers of play to give you an idea of the faction's scope and sway); some decent 4e style environmental style hazards; and a really well put together Skill Challenge guideline. The 5e math is ofc still naughty word for SCs compared to 4e/13th age, but this is about as good as you're gonna get!
 



delericho

Legend
I'm surprised, and also delighted, that this Kickstarter fulfilled so quickly. But, alas, I have no idea when I'm likely to find any time to read the thing. :(
 

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